It has been recommended that we remove the number of links in our footer, should we?

[mozalbin]

Ryan, your absolutely right about the .xml-sitemap. The important is of course that the sitemap is reported to the search engines and therefore it's not mandatory to place it in the footer. (Should have thought of that...sorry)

[EGOL]

You are operating under the assumption that people are using those footer links.

Run a program like CrazyEgg to see if anyone is clicking those links.

I bet nobody clicks them.

[aran088]

Thanks Albin!

How would you get the most useful data on the footer links with Google Analytics? I use site overlay and it's not very accurate because site overlay just reports on the percent of people who click on a link on the page, regardless of location. I am not 100% certain as to how to get actionable data on the effectiveness of the footer.

It's a pretty labour intensive project redesigning and re-implementing a new footer so I want to make sure it's really worth it.

[aran088]

You are probably right, but by removing the subcategories for the other sections of the site (Guides, Blog) maybe lateral movement throughout the site will be reduced... is that reduced browsing worth the SEO benefit by the number of links removed?

[aran088]

Thanks Ryan - My challenge is getting actionable data on how useful the footer links are to users. How would you recommend using Google Analytics to accomplish this?

[aran088]

Thanks Egol! I have looked at CrazyEgg in the past, and I will revisit them now.

[ericpratum]

There are a number of different ways in GA, Omniture, etc to track specific link clicks from places like the footer...many of which I'm not extremely well versed in, but the googles certainly know. I would definitely recommend doing that to get a pure numbers look at the situation.

I'd also though recommend you modify Will Critchlow's mturk method of grading content for a look at usability of the footer and/or use something like usertesting.com to get some qualitative feedback on the footer. Guaranteed you will get a look at your design that you've never even thought of, and the cost is so extremely low when you consider what you can get out of it.

replicate-googles-panda-questionnaire-whiteboard-friday

[crvw]

I definitely agree that you should figure out if your footer links are adding value to your users.  If they are, I'm not sure I'd blindly follow the "prune your links" philosophy.  I note that Zappos.com seems to rank OK with a pretty link heavy footer.  One size does not fit all.

[zeepartner]

@Aran: Did you find out if people actually clicked on those footer links? From the screenshot, the links don't look too bad and it's possible to keep an overview. So it would be interesting to know if people don't even click on a well-done footer...

[GYMSN]

This was just mentioned in Rand's white board video, tip #3.  The only thing is it conflicts with SEOmoz's linking, as they have about 20 links on the footer.  Are they there because they are getting clicked on?

I'm pretty sure nobody clicks on my footer links and am in the process of removing them and adding customized side navigations on specific pages to add a better navigational structure.

To SEOmoz, why so many footer links on SEOmoz if it's a 2012 no, no?

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